Falling

Months in Europe with my brother,
without studying, without work.
We'd left our part-time jobs, our schools,
our mother, to board trains for Paris,
Rome, Belgrade, knowing nothing about war,
nothing about God, or love, art's fluent language.
Nothing about heartbreak. In Madrid,
we drank coffee spiked with cognac, walked
around Plaza Mayor, sat in restaurants for hours.
We had gray days—like the day we saw Picasso's
painting of Guernica—and we had dark,
star-less nights, reminiscent of the night
bombs fell on that Basque town while children
and their parents slept, in April, almost May,
spring outside their windows, wine bottles
forgotten on the tables. And there were cold
days too, like the day at El Retiro Park
when we stood looking at Bellver's angel,
mouth wide open, bronze wings extended,
face facing heaven. Today, I've come
to see the angel, and to remember
that winter day, how my brother looked
in his suede jacket, how soft my face appears
in the photograph, long hair braided to one side.
It's spring, and white, yellow, pink,
red roses bloom under the sun warming
students sunbathing on the grass. Deaf, dumb,
and blind about our days in Spain, except
the way my brother shivered in a light jacket.

Copyright Credit: Esperanza Snyder, "Falling" from Esperanza and Hope.  Copyright © 2018 by Esperanza Snyder.  Reprinted by permission of The Sheep Meadow Press.
Source: Esperanza and Hope (The Sheep Meadow Press, 2018)